BOSTON — Every team in the soccer World Cup is looking for an edge. The Germans have the supportive crowd and home field advantage. The Togolese have their chief voodoo fetish priest, Togbui Assiogbo Gnagblondjro, whose bold prediction that his countrymen would beat South Korea and France has not come to pass.

And Spain has a Boston University professor of psychology who vacations on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, Leonard Zaichkowsky.

Zaichkowsky, a sports psychologist who has consulted for the U.S. Olympic Committee, the National Football League and the Boston Celtics, among others, has been shuttling between Boston and Europe since April, advising the Spanish national soccer team.

Why? Because they have been stone- dead losers, the most accursed choke artists in the game. Four years ago, they lost a tied game on penalty kicks after the referees disallowed two of their goals, one of which "was ruled out of bounds despite replays showing otherwise," according to the Associated Press.

A former student with contacts in the Spanish soccer federation hooked Zaichkowsky up with the Spanish national team. As it happens, Prof. Z. no habla espanol. "I asked them why they didn't find a Spaniard, and they said all they had were university guys who hadn't done much with high-end athletes. They liked my style and said 'You're on.'"

Zaichkowsky credits Spain's coach, Luis Aragones, with assembling a close-knit team, and he sees his job primarily as one of providing positive reinforcement. He has led trust-building exercises, has created highlight reels for each player, and meets with players individually and in groups.

Someone is doing something right; Spain has won 23 consecutive games since Aragones took the helm, and humiliated Ukraine 4-0 in the team's first World Cup outing. After the game, Aragones said his team was better prepared "physically and mentally," so maybe Prof. Z. can take a bow. Having beaten Tunisia 3-1 on Monday, Spain is through to the second round.

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I noticed that Ukraine's coach, the former Soviet soccer star Oleg Blokhin, had enforced a celibacy rule in his training camp. Zaichkowsky wasn't impressed. "There's no good science on that stuff," he says. "Aragones wants things to be as normal as possible. After Wednesday's game, he said, 'O.K. boys, you're free until Friday night.'"

What about the U.S. coach Bruce Arena's "calling out" several of his players, publicly accusing them of underperforming in the team's lackluster loss to the Czech Republic? "My experience is that so often it doesn't work," Zaichkowsky says. "Players hate it. They know if they messed up. The literature supports the idea that you can gently persuade people to raise the level of their performance." Whatever the case, Arena's team rose to the occasion Saturday against Italy.

Zaichkowsky's Boston background is particularly helpful in dealing with Spain's most powerful opponent - its own news media. "It's intense," he says. "All they say is, 'we're doomed,' 'we're cursed,' they're trying to get into that whole failed history. They're no different from the Boston media - they're looking for controversy all the time."

The filmmaker Nancy Kates ("Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin") sent me this letter: "The enclosed little box arrived a few weeks ago - my mother received it at a Harvard function in Florida. She thought I should have it - two pieces of chocolate in the shape of the crest of the World's Greatest University. I ate one piece, and thought it was particularly ironic that my obscenely rich alma mater had such mediocre chocolate."

By way of comparison, Kates sent me a bar of Scharffen Berger semisweet dark chocolate, which is made down the street from her office in Berkeley, California.

By coincidence, the San Francisco Chocolate Factory (motto: "Chocolate is a good thing") had sent me some Gaia Organic Chocolate, so I conducted a scientific sampling in Alex's Test Kitchen. Gaia nabbed first place, Scharffen Berger came in second, and, to use a World Cup metaphor, the commemorative Harvard chocolate made by Boston's V.I.P. Sweets failed to emerge from the group.

A version of this article appears in print on June 20, 2006, in The International Herald Tribune. Today's Paper|Subscribe